The Cigar As a Source of Indoor Carbon Monoxide and Particles. N. Klepeis, Lockheed Environmental Systems and Technologies, 980 Kelly Johnson Drive, Las Vegas, NV 89119; and W. R. Ott, Department of Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305
In recent years, there has been much concern about exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), and the Environmental Protection Agency has classified ETS as an environmental carcinogen. Smoking cigarettes indoors has been the widely accepted source of ETS exposure, but the cigar has received relatively little attention compared with cigarettes as a source of ETS pollutants such as carbon monoxide (CO) and respirable suspended particle (RSP). Experiments that collected airborne CO and RSP concentrations were conducted with five different types of cigars in a recently-vacated university office building. Two previous occupants of the building had smoked cigars on a daily basis. The air exchange rate of the office was varied (0.1 to 7 air changes per hour) by changing the position of the outside window and the transom over the door. The time for which each cigar was smoked varied from six minutes to approximately one hour. Average CO concentrations ranged from 0.9 to 9 ppm over experiment durations that ranged from approximately 1.5 hrs to over 24 hrs. CO source strengths varied from about 800 to over 1200 mg of CO per cigar. These source strengths are between one and two orders of magnitude greater than the corresponding sources strengths that have been determined for cigarettes. Because of its strong source strength, the cigar was found to be a convenient generator of tracer air pollutants for use in indoor air quality field studies. Other field studies in a tavern, two airport smoking lounges, and two homes have also successfully used cigars to measure ventilatory air exchange rates and RSP decay rates.